Big Going Ons In Denver Next Week

Meeting of titans, and tech galore

By Jon Peddie

Siggraph, now in its 51st year, is also celebrating 50^th anniversary from its last time in 1974, when it was at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

One of the big tent events of the conference this year will be the showdown between the two superstars, Keynote speaker Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg.

Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg (Source Siggraph)

Those tech giants who have helped shape the world we live in will have a fireside chat on their visions of research in AI and virtual worlds. If you want to know what you’ll be doing or writing about in five years, this is a must-attend session. (Monday 4:00 pm MT).

Other notable presenters at Siggraph 2024 include Dr. Dava Newman from MIT Media Lab, Dr. Mark Sagar of Soul Machines, and Manu Prakash from Stanford University. They will share insights on creating an optimal technological future across various scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic, including unmeasurable concepts like Imagination. These Keynote Speakers aim to advance computer graphics and interactive techniques into the next half-century.

Denver is a hub for Climate research, with NCAR and NOAA both in Boulder, for instance. Can the conference expand beyond its recent center, which has been heavily VFX, and M&E focused, to better address other markets? We think so and hope to help drive that. And Nvidia, with its PR reach, is going to raise the conference’s visibility and potentially impact attendance. 

Nvidia has been a big presence at Siggraph for quite some time now, choosing to launch and announce innovative, and sometimes truly amazing, new CG tech there. Can we ever forget seeing real-time ray tracing at Vancouver Siggraph 2018?

Nvidia has been a visible and loyal supporter of Siggraph for several decades. That’s because the company believes (and we agree) that the industry as a whole is better off with a healthy and growing Siggraph than it is without. Towards that end, Nvidia has engaged with ACM Siggraph and the executive leaders with an offer to act more like partners than Nvidia as just a vendor. That offer has been welcomed, and has resulted in some important activities and initiatives:

One example of the Company’s participation is Huang’s keynote fireside chat, with Wired magazine senior writer Lauren Goode as moderator. (Monday, 2:30 Mountain Time).

Nvidia has also taken first place in papers with 23 papers accepted by Siggraph, two of which have been named Best Paper. Getting a paper accepted at Siggraph is a real resume builder for a computer scientist or engineer.

Anyone who has been to a few Siggraph conferences can’t help but notice that although the conference has maintained its luster, with researchers proud to have papers accepted and enthusiastically sharing leading-edge work with their peers, the exhibit area has become notably smaller and less of a must-see in comparison to years past.

To help energize the conference, Nvidia worked with Siggraph to create an Innovation Zone, and the company has brought in 18 top startups to show new technologies in climate visualization, robotics, digital humans, healthcare, manufacturing, spatial computing, autonomous vehicles, and more—some topics that haven’t had much coverage at Siggraph, and yet all which use computer graphics. This is exactly what Siggraph needs to do and demonstrate a bigger footprint beyond just VFX.

In addition, Nvidia has populated and is supporting 50+ partners at the show in exhibits, talks, and sessions, so the company’s commitment is pretty darn visible. Nvidia is also bringing its training courses to Siggraph, including a new course co-developed with Siggraph and Nvidia.

And the company is sponsoring Wigraph (ACM community group for women in computer graphics research) and Women of Siggraph events at the conference and participating in the Real-Time Live competition (Tuesday, 6:00 Mountain).

Nvidia is certainly not the only enthusiastic supporter of Siggraph, AMD, Adobe, Intel, and many other companies have been stalwart advocates of the conference over the years, and we applaud, appreciate, and admire them all. 

So we’ll see you in Denver, you’re going to have a great time.

If you’re going, to Siggraph Denver, be sure to wear some pixels in your hair

(J. Peddie)